


This Version of Heaven

by mariana_oconnor



Series: Tumblr fic [8]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes is a bit rusty at this, Canon-Typical Violence, Clint Barton's awesome self esteem, Deaf Clint Barton, Eavesdropping, Hurt Clint Barton, M/M, Matchmaker Natasha Romanov, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-12 01:41:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16863832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariana_oconnor/pseuds/mariana_oconnor
Summary: Clint is the bait in the trap, but Bucky comes after him anyway.





	This Version of Heaven

“You need to leave. Right now.” Clint knows his voice sounds terrible, he can feel the air grating across his vocal cords, not that he can hear it properly.

Bucky glares at him and shakes his head, holding one finger to his lips. He looks amazing, and the only reason Clint’s not ecstatic that he gets to see him one last time is because this is a trap. This is a huge fucking trap. He manages to croak that out, trying to keep his voice as quiet as possible.

He’s strung up from the ceiling. One of his shoulders is dislocated, and he knows that if he were to make it out of here alive, he’d be on sick leave for months trying to get it rehabilitated, the way they’ve been wrenching it around, and the way he’s hanging on it now.

Bucky crosses over to the door, seemingly listening for something. Clint tries to hear whatever it is before remembering that – oh yeah – he can’t. Stupid ears. Bucky nods to himself before coming back over.

He reaches up with his flesh hand and cups Clint’s face. Clint must look worse than he feels even, because Bucky’s being gentle and that’s not how they are. They’re not gentle. They punch each other’s shoulders and kick each other off the sofa. They stick their smelly feet in each other’s faces and slap each other on the back. Gentle only lives in Clint’s hazy daydreams, the ones that come during morning lie ins when he hasn’t summoned up enough control over his brain.

Bucky tilts Clint’s head back up. He hadn’t realised it had flopped down again. Huh.

He repeats the word ‘trap’. His mouth is dry, his tongue like sandpaper. His throat aches.

Bucky nods and his mouth moves. Clint follows the movements as closely as he can. “Hi ho,” which makes no sense, because Bucky’s not one of the seven dwarves. He thinks he says that out loud, because Bucky makes a face. It’s a face Clint doesn’t need his ears to translate, because it very clearly says ‘what the fuck, Barton?” Lots of people make that face. But Bucky’s face is the best face.

Clint might be a little out of it. It’s a theory.

Bucky steps back and Clint didn’t realise how cold he was until the extra body warmth is gone. The pain seems to redouble and he knows he makes a noise.

A good thing about being mostly deaf is that Clint barely hears the gun shot as Bucky shoots out the chains holding him to the ceiling. Gun shots are loud.

Which means that Bucky’s announcing his presence to the whole damn base.

But Clint doesn’t have time to think about that when he’s falling to the ground with all the grace of a sack of potatoes.

If he thought his shoulder hurt before, the sudden release of the tension is worse. His arms flop down and it’s like his entire right shoulder is on fire with the pain.

He bites his lip to try and keep stoic. He’s a superhero, right. They don’t go down so easy. Cap wouldn’t cry just ‘cause of a dislocated shoulder. And Clint’s had worse.

Bucky’s right by his side, working the cuffs off his wrists and checking him over with careful fingers. Clint must be on his deathbed, seeing how soft his touch is.

It’s not that Bucky can’t be soft. He can be. Clint’s seen him with little kids and with animals, and he knows that Bucky’s a marshmallow when he wants to be. But Clint doesn’t get soft, squishy marshmallow Bucky. Clint gets Bucky with the shit-eating grin pranking him first thing in the morning.

It’s a pity Clint’s in too much pain to enjoy this. Just his luck.

He flinches away when Bucky gets to his shoulder and Bucky’s forehead furrows in a frown. If Clint’s arms weren’t made of lead, he’d lift a finger to poke that little furrow.

Then he remembers that this is a trap. Bucky has walked into a trap, and he summons up the energy to raise his one good arm and shove, directly in the centre of Bucky’s chest. It barely rocks the guy back. Stupid super soldier strength. Clint tries again, but this gets less of a reaction again. When he tries for the third time, Bucky wraps his metal fingers around his wrist, not tight, but unmoving.

His other hand comes up to cup Clint’s face again, but Clint twists to shake it off. Bucky has to go. He has to go. He can’t tell if he’s speaking loud enough for Bucky to hear him, or maybe he’s screaming. Everything in his head is a weird pressure roar now – like sound without sound, or maybe there’s enough sound that it’s even piercing his lousy fucking eardrums.

Both his hands out of action, he tries to kick Bucky away and that move seems to take him by enough surprise that he jerks backwards, Clint’s wrist still caught in his hand.

Clint knows he makes a noise of pain.

Guess now he has two bad arms.

Bucky releases him immediately, tries to push back into Clint’s space to check the damage, but Clint just cradles his arm against his chest and pulls back, telling Bucky to go again.

There’s a moment when Bucky’s face is soft as well, and it looks – hurt. His mouth falls open a bit and Clint feels like he just shot a puppy, but then the look is gone, Bucky’s mouth a hard, straight line of steel, and everything’s back to normal.

Except Bucky’s just walked into a trap and he doesn’t seem to care. He’s still watching Clint, not moving, and not coming any closer, just standing there and saying something every now and then, his lips not moving enough for Clint to follow in his current state.

He’s not sure what else to do, so he struggles to his feet, and Bucky’s giving him that look again, the one that says exactly what a fuck up Clint is, the one that says ‘what are you doing, idiot?’

Clint’s balance is shot. His legs are trembling like he found the vibrate function, and he has no idea what he’s going to do. His entire body is a ball of condensed pain, but he’ll be damned if Bucky dies because of him.

Bucky approaches him slowly, carefully, and then tilts his head to one side to say something, Clint still can’t hear him.

Bucky lifts a hand again, to touch Clint’s not-as-fucked shoulder and face Clint head on, his mouth forming his next words clearly as Clint blinks at him.

“Sorry about this.”

Then his other hand comes up, lightning fast, and there’s a sharp sting in Clint’s neck, that barely registers against the rest of the pain, and Clint blinks a few more times, slow, slow slo-ow.

*

He wakes up in a cloud of disinfectant and cleanliness, and he wrinkles his nose before he even opens his eyes. A light hand against his wrist taps twice and he taps back. He knows the touch and the shape of the slender fingers. Natasha is always recognisable, even without his eyes or ears. She taps again, more insistently and Clint reluctantly opens his eyes.

He’s feeling floaty, which means drugs, and his left arm is strapped across his chest. He supposes he must have missed the bit where they relocated his shoulder. Great. He hates that part. He looks at Natasha and she looks unimpressed, but this is hardly the first time they’ve played these roles.

He raises an eyebrow, she rolls her eyes. He grins as big and wide as he can, her mouth purses together. Clint doesn’t need ears for this bit, they’re clear.

She looks well rested and like she’s just passing through. Clint’s not taken in. He knows she’s been sitting there for hours from the creases in her leather jacket.

They stare at each other for a long moment, going over the well-worn tracks of a familiar silent conversation. He will never convince her that he’s fine. She will never convince him to be more careful. Their friendship lives around that impasse.

Once she’s done judging him and he’s done ignoring her, Natasha fishes in her pocket and pulls out a pair of bright purple hearing aids, raising her eyebrows in question as she reaches towards him. Clint tilts his head to let her put them in.

The first thing he hears is the beep of the machine telling him he’s still alive, and he groans. Hospitals are the worst.

“Do I really need to hear for this?” he asks.

“You need to speak to Barnes,” she says.

Clint can remember the events of – what he assumes was – his rescue in snatches, like a jigsaw still in the box, the pieces sliding over each other every which way. He remembers Bucky and he remembers being scared, his heart beating frantically in his chest. He can hear the speeding up of the heart monitor in echo of the remembered terror, and he glares at it.

Natasha crosses her arms and watches him.

“Guess I should say thank you,” he agrees. “Though he was an idiot to walk into a trap like that.”

“True,” Natasha agrees. Clint smirks a little at the validation. “Don’t worry, I’ve already spoken to him about being thinking before you act when you know you’re compromised.”

“What?” Clint asks, because it might be the drugs, but he doesn’t think that made sense. Bucky doesn’t get compromised. Well… maybe Steve. But Steve was fine. Steve’s fine, right? “Is Cap OK?” he asks. Natasha stares at him, blinking like she’s actually taken aback by the question. It’s not every day Clint surprises her, so he’s a little proud, even if he doesn’t know how he did it.

“Steve’s fine,” she says. “He might have bruised his knuckles on the jaws of some of the guys who kidnapped you.”

“And Bucky’s fine?”

There’s a twist to her mouth that makes Clint’s heart leap to his throat. He’d assumed, from how blasé she was about talking to him, that Bucky was fine, but that expression.

“Physically, he’s fine.”

Aw, shit no. Bucky’s been getting better. His dark moments have been getting further and further apart, mostly, and he’s been smiling more. The idea that something’s set back that progress, and that it’s all Clint’s fault for letting his stupid ass get kidnapped, clenches around him like a vice.

Natasha sighs as she sees his face fall/

“Talk to him. Be honest. Don’t be stupid,” she instructs, standing up.

“What?” Clint says again. The default setting with Natasha is being 50% in the dark, but this conversation seems especially shadowy.

“He thinks you’re scared of him and that you hate him,” she says. Clint blinks, because that makes no sense. He opens his mouth to say ‘what’ again, but clamps it shut so he doesn’t sound like an idiot. If Natasha’s expression is anything to go by, he just looks like an idiot instead. It’s okay, he can cope with that.

“I’m not scared of him,” he says.

“Good,” Natasha tells him. “Then you won’t be scared of telling him that the reason you ran out of the gym last week was because you took one look at him covered in sweat and you needed to jerk off in the bathroom.”

“Tasha!” Clint protests, flushing a little, because even if it’s true, she’s still talking about Bucky Barnes, who’s been one of Clint’s heroes since he was old enough to follow the pictures in his brother’s old comic books.

“And you won’t be too scared to tell him that the only thing you want more than you want him to bend you over the sofa in the middle of one of your video game marathons is to cuddle him afterwards.”

“Tasha,” Clint repeats, a little more subdued now, because she’s right. He knows, he always knows, that Natasha can see through him like he’s made of glass, but she doesn’t often use it against him. She respects his boundaries. She doesn’t bring it up. She reaches one hand to smooth across his forehead gently. It’s an apology, sure, but Clint knows her better than to think that that’s the only reason.

“It’s okay to want him,” she says. “He’s not untouchable. You’re not unworthy.”

He pouts, because he’s injured and on drugs, so he’s allowed to be childish.

“So tell him,” she says, her face hardening. “And then I’ll be godmother to your adorable adopted children.”

“I’d be a terrible dad,” Clint says.

“No, you wouldn’t.”

Clint freezes, because the words don’t come from Natasha’s mouth. They’re coming from behind her, near the door, in a voice that is worryingly familiar. He knows his eyes have gone wide and his mouth has fallen open. He can hear the heart monitor beeping faster again as he swivels his head to look at the door, where Bucky’s standing.

He looks like shit, but Clint’s pretty sure you’re not supposed to say that.

“Uh,” he says instead, before shutting his mouth and trying to reach up to scratch his head, but one arm’s strapped up tight and the other has a drip in it, so that just ends up being a mistake. And he thinks he just offered to have children with Bucky Barnes – or Natasha offered him. It’s all a bit unclear.

“You both owe me,” Natasha says, before pulling away to walk towards the door. She stops briefly to say something to Bucky in the doorway, before grinning brightly over her shoulder at Clint and then sashaying away smugly.

Stupid best friends.

“Hi,” Bucky says.

“So I guess you heard…”

“All of that,” Bucky fills in. “I was standing outside the door and…” he waves a hand at his ears. “Serum.”

“Right.” Super soldiers make for really good eavesdroppers.

“So you’re not… scared of me?” Bucky asks, a little awkwardly.

“No?” Clint says, still just as confused about that as before.

“When I got there, you were out of it, but you knew who I was.” Bucky still lingers in the doorway, as if he’s uncertain of his welcome even after all that he’s heard. “You… you didn’t want me near you. You kept hitting me and kicking me to get me to leave you alone. I had to sedate you just to get you out of there.” Clint stares at him, because that… is not how he remembers it.

“I wasn’t scared of you… I was…” Clint swallows because he’s suddenly aware of how stupid it will sound to say ‘I was trying to save you’ to the Winter Soldier. Like Clint Barton could ever save him. He’s human, and sure he’s a good shot, but how could he ever think he’d be able to save Bucky. “It was a trap. You should have left me there,” he says, finally.

Bucky stares at him, like the idea never even crossed his mind.

Bucky’s closer to him now. Clint is very aware of how trapped he is in the bed, tied down by the IV and the blankets cocooned around him.

“Coming in after me was stupid,” Clint says. Natasha agreed with him on that one. Bucky ducks his head and gives him a sheepish look that seems deliberate, looking up through his eyelashes and the fall of his hair as he rubs at his shoulder.

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees. “But I can’t promise I won’t do it again.”

“Why not?” Clint asks. He’s not sure he wants to know the answer. He wants to be anywhere else but here.

“I don’t think I’m ever gonna do the smart thing when you’re in trouble,” Bucky says, his voice is soft. All of him looks soft now. All the harsh edges are gone. He picks Clint’s hand up, almost idly, his touch as light as a feather. “I don’t think straight when you’re involved full stop. Steve keeps getting me to agree to stuff by asking me when you’re in the room. I’ve agreed to three hours of extra training with the raw recruits ‘cause of you.”

“Sorry?” Clint says. He’s pretty sure that something’s happening here. His hand feels sweaty and ridiculous in Bucky’s light grasp, but he’s pretty sure this is Important.

“You can make it up to me by healing up so I can bend you over the sofa without breaking you more,” Bucky says. His lips turn up in a cunning little smirk, and Clint jerks at the imagery. His brain can’t quite process the words as real, but his imagination is happy to provide some instructional videos.

“I don’t break easy,” he says. His voice is rough.

“I’d prefer to know for sure that you’re only screaming ‘cause I’m so damn good.”

“What makes you think I’ll be the one screaming?” Clint asks.

“That sounds like a challenge,” Bucky says, leaning over the bed, his smirk even wider now. Clint zeroes in on his lips, licking his own reflexively.

“Come on, if you think you’re hard enough…” Clint says back.

Bucky leans closer again, and Clint wishes that he could move his other arm, because he wants to drag Bucky onto the bed with him, wind his fingers into his hair and prove just how dedicated he can be to winning that sort of challenge, but instead he can’t move closer and Bucky hovers just out of reach.

“Oh, I’m hard enough,” Bucky says. “Are you?”

“Definitely,” Clint answers immediately. He thinks maybe they missed a step – the talking-about-it step – but he’s more than happy to skip that. The talking about it thing is not his strong point. He’s a man of action. When action’s not involved he’s a bit useless. But action, he can get behind. He leans his upper body up a bit, towards where Bucky’s face hovers above him. “Definitely hard enough.”

“That’s a pity,” Bucky says, and for a second, Clint’s world crumbles, the bottom falling out from him and Bucky’s eyes go wide. “Shit, no. That’s not what I meant. I just… Fuck. I just meant that we can’t get up to anything until you’re out of medical.” He grimaces. “Sorry, it’s been a while since I’ve done this. Not exactly a lot of meet and greets in the Hydra cryochambers. Date nights weren’t really part of the mission objectives”

“No dating on ice?” Clint asks, trying to make it a joke. “Hydra speed dating nights not popular? And… Wait? Dates. Like dating… like not just sex?”

“Not just sex,” Bucky agrees, smiling again. “I mean, eventually sex, but I’d like to take you out, see a movie, buy a pizza, get into inadvisable bar fights with you.”

“We do that already,” Clint points out.

“Yeah, I guess we do,” Bucky admits. “But this time round I get to hold your hand and kiss you goodnight.”

Bucky’s holding his hand right now, and Clint is forever going to blame the drugs for making him feel all swoony about that. He’s not actually in junior high.

“You think you’d be interested in that?” Bucky asks. “I mean, I know there’s a bit of an age gap, but–”

“I’d be interested,” Clint says quickly. “And I don’t say that to all the hundred year old men I meet.”

“Glad to hear it,” Bucky says, smiling. “Don’t wanna have to fight off a crowd of pensioners.”

“I hear they’re vicious with their walking sticks.”

“Best if you avoid them, then,” Bucky tells him. He frowns slightly, then reaches out a hand to trace a finger across Clint’s forehead, right under the line of stitches he can feel. It’s a strange touch, because it’s both tentative and not tentative, like Bucky can’t quite decide if it’s allowed, but once he commits, he commits. “You’re already beat up enough.”

“Yeah,” Clint agrees. He wonders if he’s hallucinating all of this. Maybe he never got rescued from that hell hole. Maybe this is some sort of dying delusion, or a version of heaven. It would be typical if even in heaven he was too injured to actually do anything about the way Bucky makes his heart race and his dick jump to attention.

But if it’s heaven then maybe sex isn’t allowed, ‘cause heaven’s all religious and shit, right, and they always say no sex outside of marriage, and he’s pretty sure all the major religions have a no gay policy, at least officially. But Clint doesn’t even know if he’d get into heaven, and being stuck just out of reach of Bucky Barnes – and Bucky Barnes’ dick – for all eternity sounds pretty much like hell to him.

“I don’t want to go to heaven if I can’t suck your dick,” Clint says. Bucky blinks at him and then blinks again, then his face creases into grin, broader than Clint’s seen in ages, and he starts to laugh, starts to laugh loud and long and happy. Clint grins back and his side twinges.

“The feeling’s mutual,” Bucky says eventually.

“I’m not dead, right?” Clint asks. It’s starting to seem like a valid question. The smile falls off Bucky’s face and he becomes serious.

“No,” he says firmly. “Came closer than I would like, but you’re not dead. And I’d appreciate it if you’d stay that way. So stay alive, and we’ll see what we can do about the dick sucking.”

“And the pizza.”

“And the pizza,” Bucky agrees.

“And the inadvisable bar fights,” Clint adds.

“I don’t think we could stop them if we tried.”

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on my tumblr [here](https://mariana-oconnor.tumblr.com/post/172664063706/390-prompts-374-you-need-to-leave-right-now).
> 
> Apparently I like it when Nat tricks them into confessing that they like each other.


End file.
